The present disclosure relates to an LED driving apparatus and a lighting apparatus including the same.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs), generally described as semiconductor light emitting devices, may have advantages, such as relatively low power consumption, a relatively long lifespan, the implementation of light having various colors, and the like, as compared to existing light sources such as fluorescent and incandescent lamps. Based on the advantages as described above, the fields of application of LEDs have expanded to various lighting apparatuses, backlight units of display apparatuses, vehicle headlamps, and the like. In general, since LEDs may be operated by a constant current, an LED driving apparatus may include a rectifier circuit converting AC power into DC power and a converter circuit generating constant current power from an output of the rectifier circuit.
Recently, in order to reduce manufacturing costs by decreasing the amount of circuit components, as well as to increase reliability, LED driving apparatuses capable of driving LEDs without a converter circuit have been proposed. An LED driving apparatus having no converter circuit may include a controller integrated circuit (IC) having a plurality of switches and a plurality of LED arrays, light emission of which is controlled by the controller IC. The LED driving apparatus having no converter circuit may have advantages such as high reliability, low manufacturing costs, and the like, but due to limiting current properties of the controller IC, may be disadvantageous in that output of a drivable LED array is limited.